The Identity Consolidation Inventory (ICI): Development and Application of a Questionnaire for Assessing the Structuralization of Individual Identity

This paper describes the author's effort to develop a self-rating scale to measure the consolidation of identity in a given individual. It describes the construction of the 35-item Identity Consolidation Inventory (ICI) and, as an appendix to the paper, includes the final version of this questionnaire. The scale's reliability and validity are demonstrated via its administration to 238 normal controls, 80 individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder and 13 subjects with Dissociative Identity Disorder (“multiple personality”). The clinical and research usefulness of ICI lies in the realm of discerning the syndrome of identity diffusion that underlies all severe personality disorders.     

Intersectionality at Work: South Asian Muslim Women’s Experiences of Employment and Leadership in the United Kingdom

Drawing on qualitative interviews with 20 South Asian heritage, Muslim, female leaders, managers, and supervisors in the United Kingdom, we examine the multi-layered issues and challenges they face in pursuit of employment and leadership positions. The paper offers an intersectional perspective taking into account interconnected and overlapping factors (gender, ethnicity, religion, and family status) that affect not only the issues and challenges these women face in the labour market but also the individual agency and strategies they use to overcome any obstacles in the way of their employment and career. The results show that although Muslim women continue to face a myriad of challenges in the workplace, they are also able to tackle some of these issues through their individual strategies and networks, such as personal networks and further education. The study highlights the need for policymakers and employers to consider intersectionality to enable ethnic minority women’s inclusion and leadership within and outside the workplace.     

Forward and backward second-order Pavlovian conditioning in honeybees

Second-order conditioning (SOC) is the association of a neutral stimulus with another stimulus that had previously been combined with an unconditioned stimulus (US). We used classical conditioning of the proboscis extension response (PER) in honeybees (Apis mellifera) with odors (CS) and sugar (US). Previous SOC experiments in bees were inconclusive, and, therefore, we attempted to demonstrate SOC in the following three experiments: (Experiment 1) After differential conditioning (pairing odor A with US and presenting odor B without US), the bees experienced two pairs of partially overlapping odors, either a new odor C followed by a previously reinforced odor A (C-A) or a new odor C followed by a previously nonreinforced odor B (C-B). (Experiment 2) After differential conditioning, bees were presented with C-A or A-C. (Experiment 3) Bees were first presented with C-A or A-C before differential conditioning and were tested with odor C. We observed: (Experiment 1) 40% of the bees showed PER to the C-A presentation, but only 20% showed PER to the C-B presentation. (Experiment 2) 40% of the bees showed PER to the C-A presentation, while only 20% showed PER to the reversed sequence A-C. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that a previously reinforced odor can be a secondary reinforcer for excitatory SOC only with forward-pairing. (Experiment 3) PER toward C was lower (15%) in bees presented with A-C than with C-A (25%). This showed that backward SOC is not as effective as forward SOC. These results help to delineate different conditions that are critical for the phenomenon of SOC.     

Repression: A Critical Assessment and Update of Freud’s 1915 Paper

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - The concept of repression has been relegated to the periphery in current psychoanalytic theorizing. This is in part due to a reflexive and ill-informed...     

Respecting Embedded Disability

In certain ways, many disabilities seem to occupy a middle ground between illnesses like cancer and identity‐traits like race: like illnesses, they can present a wide variety of obstacles in a range of social and natural environments and, insofar as they do, they are something we should prevent potential people from having for their own sake; at the same time, those same types of disabilities can be, like race, a valuable part of the identity of the persons who already have them. I consider this seemingly dual nature of a significant class of disabilities to attempt to understand the proper relation of those disabilities to persons and how we should value or respect them. I argue for a distinction between embedded disabilities (e.g. John's blindness) and general disabilities (e.g. blindness‐in‐general); importantly not everyone with a disability will turn out to have an embedded disability. I then show that expressing negative value judgments about general disabilities does not typically express disrespect for people with disabilities — thereby addressing a long‐standing charge made by many in the disabilities community. Finally, I show that unlike with disabilities, expressing negative judgments about the general form of identity‐traits like race does typically express disrespect for people with those identity‐traits.     

Train the child and teach the adult: Developing intervention strategies for increasing seafood consumption

Despite increasing levels of per capita seafood consumption globally, consumption levels across the population vary with many consumers eating less than recommended weekly intakes. This study investigates the influence of childhood patterns of seafood consumption, consumer confidence in selecting and preparing seafood, adult eating habits, and lifestyle on seafood consumption. Partial least squares structural equation modelling analysis was conducted using a sample of 1,318 Australian adults. The results show that consuming seafood regularly in childhood and developing the confidence to select and prepare seafood as an adult contribute to the development of seafood eating habits. Subsequently, a habit of consuming seafood leads to a lifestyle involving regular consumption of seafood. The results indicate the need to develop and implement intervention strategies for encouraging childhood seafood consumption (“train the child”) and increasing adults' confidence in selecting and preparing seafood (“teach the adult”). Intervention strategies proposed include educational programmes targeted at both children and adults, combined with the development of seafood products that appeal to children and suit the changing lifestyle needs of today's 21st century consumers.     

Analysing applications of neuromarketing in efficacy of programmatic advertising

In this paper, there is exploration of the concept of neuromarketing as a newly developed strategy with economic potential deriving from human brain research. The central notion of the essay is that programmatic advertising can be used to better comprehend the idea of neuromarketing and its impact on consumers' decision-making. So neuromarketing involves the scientific observation of brainwave activity, eye tracking, and skin response to determine how people's brains react to advertisements and other brand-related communications. By studying the brain, these neuromarketing strategies can forecast how consumers will make decisions. The neuromarketing tactics' benefits and constraints are studied on a number of market input devices in the paper. The influence of various techniques of neuromarketing is studied from the available research studies and literature. In the recent years, the neuromarketing concept has been able to garner a lot of importance in its contribution to the marketing, advertising, and programmatic advertising has been immensely helped by the understanding of consumer decision making. The consumer behaviour has been able to be comprehended through neuromarketing techniques which are one of the key pillars of the purpose and running of programmatic advertising. A neuromarketing study shall be the helping hand for increasing customer base, market leadership, and converting them to loyal customers. It will help in programmatic advertising through the understanding of the advertiser with respect to the likes and wants of the customers and how consumer attention can be drawn. The consumer behaviour can be understood by the marketers in terms of how the consumers react to the advertising.